Each year as springtime approaches, I recall with great affection sitting next to my mentor and friend, Rabbi Bernard Lipnick (z’’l), on the bimah of our shul. For it was on Shabbes mornings that our great teacher would provide me with his special...

Every October, there is one particular morning when our congregation’s Religious School telephone begins ringing off the hook at exactly 9 a.m. and doesn’t stop ringing all day long.  That’s the day, somewhat arbitrarily chosen, when families of...

Red lines ... lines in the sand. The roots of these expressions refer to bellicose dares testing the boldness of presumptive trespassers. Moreover, their usage suggests grave consequences should trespass occur.How ironic, then, that the longing of Man...

In such a detailed and well known Torah portion, there is much to consider for a “word of Torah” – the escape from Egypt, the splitting of the sea, the raining down of manna, the “first” Shabbat for the children of Israel, and much more.  However,...

“It’s all up to the Man Upstairs!”  How many times do we hear this from people who are experiencing ill health or some other type of crisis? Usually this is followed by the request, “Please pray for me,” as if the person himself or herself...

 “We must speak and we must act”“I can’t do it!”  “It’s impossible.” “No way!”  How often we hear such a voice of reluctance, in others and in ourselves, when the task before us seems daunting, difficult, or undesirable. In parashat...

Recently, I took my daughter to the ballet. The first thing that she did when she opened the program wasn’t to read the synopsis of the story at the front of the program. She went straight to look at the cast of characters. She wasn’t looking to...

Our Torah reading for this coming Shabbat opens with the word “Vayechi” - literally “and he lived”. Ironically, however, our Parashah describes the final days and demise of our patriarch, Jacob. What might we learn from the apparent contradiction...